Biden and Harris to ramp up public events after Labor Day
WASHINGTON — After spending a pandemic spring and summer tethered almost entirely to his Delaware home, Joe Biden plans to take his presidential campaign to battleground states after Labor Day in his bid to unseat President Donald Trump.
No itinerary is set, according to the Democratic nominee’s campaign, but the former vice president and his allies say his plan is to highlight contrasts with Trump, from policy arguments tailored to specific audiences to the strict public health guidelines the Biden campaign says its events will follow amid COVID-19.
That’s a notable difference from a president who on Thursday delivered his nomination acceptance on the White House lawn to more than 1,000 people seated side by side, most of them without masks, even as the U.S. death toll surpassed 181,000.
“He will go wherever he needs to go,” said Biden’s campaign co-chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana. “And we will do it in a way the health experts would be happy” with and “not the absolutely irresponsible manner you saw at the White House.”
Richmond said it was “always the plan” for Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, to travel more extensively after Labor Day, the traditional mark of the campaign’s home stretch when it’s thought more casual voters begin to pay close attention.
Trump and Republicans have for months mocked Biden as “hiding in his basement” because Biden has anchored his campaign from his Wilmington, Delaware, residence since mid-March, when public health officials first recommended that Americans severely limit close social contact.
Biden has conducted online fundraisers, campaign events and television interviews from his home, but traveled only sparingly for speeches and roundtables with a smattering of media or supporters. His only confirmed plane travel was to Houston, where he met with the family of George Floyd, the Black man who was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, sparking nationwide protests.
Even some Democrats worried quietly that Biden was ceding too much of the spotlight to Trump. But Biden aides have defended their approach. “We will never make any choices that put our staff or voters in harm’s way,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in May.
Throughout his unusual home-based campaign, Biden blasted Trump as incompetent and irresponsible for downplaying the pandemic and publicly disputing the government’s infectious disease experts. Richmond said that won’t change as Biden ramps up travel.
“We won’t beat this pandemic, which means we can’t restore the economy and get people’s lives back home, unless we exercise some discipline and lead by example,” Richmond said, adding that Trump is “incapable of doing it.” Trump casts Biden as wanting to “shut down” the economy to combat the virus.
Biden, in fact, has not proposed shutting down the economy. He’s said only that he would be willing to make such a move as president if public health experts advise it. The Democrat also has called for a national mask mandate, calling it a necessary move for Americans to protect each other.
Harris on Friday talked about the idea in slightly different terms than Biden, acknowledging that a mandate would be difficult to enforce.
“It’s really a standard. I mean, nobody’s gonna be punished. Come on,” the California senator said, laughing off a question about how to enforce such a rule during an interview that aired Friday on “Today.”
“Nobody likes to wear a mask,” she said. “This is a universal feeling. Right? So that’s not the point, ‘Hey, let’s enjoy wearing masks.’ No.”
Harris suggested that, instead, the rule would be about “what we — as responsible people who love our neighbor — we have to just do that right now.”
“God willing, it won’t be forever,” she added.